July 15, 2004

WHEN THE GREEN PARTY BROKE TIES
WITH CONSUMER ACTIVIST Ralph Nader -- its standard-bearer in
the last two presidential elections -- at the party's national
convention in Milwaukee, Wis., last month, it was the result
of four years of uneasiness about its own growing power at the
polls.

Most Greens officially reject
as "myth" the idea that Nader's presidential candidacy
in 2000 only succeeded in handing the election to George W. Bush.
They point to other factors: the anti-democratic nature of the
electoral college, the disenfranchisement of voters in Florida
and the U.S. Supreme Court's order to halt a recount of votes
in that state. They cite an exhaustive recount of Florida votes
done months after the election to show that Vice-President Al
Gore actually did win more votes in Florida than Bush did, despite
the final official tally that gave Bush a 543-vote margin of
victory.

But it's hard to escape the
fact that if even a small percentage of Nader's nearly 100,000
votes in Florida had gone to Gore, none of the above would have
mattered. Gore would have carried the state handily, and with
it the presidency. Though it may be party orthodoxy that Bush
cannot be blamed on the Greens, it became clear in Milwaukee
that a good number of delegates felt the sting of this argument.
After two rounds of balloting, they rejected Nader and instead
chose to nominate someone who, unlike Nader, promised that he
would not seek to be a factor in the outcome of the 2004 election:
Eureka resident David Keith Cobb.

The
choice was far from universally popular, even among Humboldt
County's Greens. One of Cobb's stated priorities for this election
year -- to evict Bush from the White House -- has an obvious
corollary that the candidate is careful never to say out loud.
If he wants Bush unseated, he wants Sen. John Kerry elected.
This rubs against the Green Party's core political tenets: In
every way that matters, the Democratic Party and the Republican
Party are one and the same. People should not have to choose
between the lesser of two evils. Vote your hopes, not your fears.

Cobb's detractors in the party
believe that his nomination amounts to a capitulation to the
Democrats. They charge that it will rob the party of any influence
over electoral politics on the national stage, and so will make
it irrelevant and meaningless. Many of them are still actively
supporting Nader's independent campaign and will be working to
put him on the ballot in their home states.

In the meantime, Cobb and his
supporters -- who include several high-profile Greens and other
progressives from outside the party -- are sticking with the
wager they made in Milwaukee. The most important thing for the
future of the party, they believe, is to recoup its good name
among the millions of Americans whose dearest wish this election
season is to see the back of George W. Bush. The Green Party
will have no future, they believe, if it ignores the will of
so many potential allies by playing the role of spoiler.

Treading lightly

A few days after the convention,
Cobb was back in Eureka at the home he shares with his partner,
Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, and the offices of Democracy Unlimited
of Humboldt County. Cobb, who moved to Humboldt County just six
months ago, has been in progressive politics for years -- working
as an anti-corporate personhood activist for Democracy Unlimited
is his latest job. While still living in Texas, he volunteered
for the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown
in 1984 and 1992. He was drawn to the Green Party when Nader
was drafted to run on its ticket in 1996, and he spearheaded
the campaign to get Nader on the Texas ballot in 2000. He later
became the party's general counsel and, in 2002, ran as a Green
for the office of Attorney General of Texas.

A few minutes of conversation
were plenty to demonstrate why the quick-witted, 41-year-old
lawyer has excelled in politics -- he radiated optimism about
the future of his party and the country, and he had no problem
staying on-message. Perching on the edge of his chair, his voice
ringing out with its Texas twang, Cobb explained why he thought
Greens -- the "genuine opposition party in this country"
-- should tread lightly on the presidential contest this year.

"John Kerry is no progressive,"
he said. "John Kerry voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He voted for the Patriot Act. He voted for NAFTA. He voted for
No Child Left Behind. He is on the record opposing raising the
minimum wage to a living wage.

"Having said all that,
George W. Bush is qualitatively worse. George W. Bush is a fundamental
problem in this country. He's not the problem -- we understand
that the real problem is the social, political and economic system
that's destroying the planet and creating this racist, sexist,
homophobic, unjust world order. So we're in a very difficult
situation. The Green Party really is growing larger and having
more influence. But with that growing power comes the responsibility
to exercise the power wisely and intelligently, not just for
the good of the Green Party, but the good of the country."

Cobb's campaign platform --
aside from working to promote core Green values like ecology,
feminism, social justice and electoral reform -- was built on
his ideas about the wise use of the Greens' power at the polls
in this year. He promotes what has become known as the "safe
states" strategy -- he promised to only actively campaign
for himself in strong Bush or strong Kerry states, where a vote
for the Green ticket would be unlikely to change that state's
vote for the presidency. His message for voters in states that
could go either way is to "vote your conscience" --
which is taken euphemistically to be a concession to those progressive
voters who would vote for Kerry out of fear of Bush.

Cobb says he will travel the
country to stump for Greens seeking local office -- on city councils,
school boards, utility districts -- in all 50 states.

"My goals have always been
very clear," Cobb said. "I want to grow and build the
Green Party in this election cycle -- elect more local Greens
to office, register more Green voters and strengthen and hone
our skills as citizen-activists."

Avocado-ism

Though Cobb performed well in
the run-up to the national convention -- competing in Green Party
primaries, traveling around the country to speak with local Green
chapters -- his message has hamstringed him, especially in California.
Cobb had been soundly defeated by Nader's running-mate, two-time
gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo [photo below left] ,
in California's March primary. In Humboldt County, Camejo got
60 percent of the vote in the primary; only 10 percent went for
Cobb, who even in his new hometown was the lesser-known candidate.

Cobb's
success at the national convention hasn't made much of a dent
in his obscurity on the ground locally or statewide, and many
-- himself included -- are transferring their efforts away from
the Green Party to Nader's independent campaign.

Last week, the Green Party of
California's coordinating committee issued a statement to county
chapters of the party that "reaffirmed" their right
to endorse Nader over Cobb, if that was their wish. Piercy resident
Paul Encimer, publisher of the Greenfuse newspaper and
a member of the committee, said hethought that the statement
was necessary, given continued support for the Nader/Camejo ticket.

"So many state-level Greens,
important members of the party, are going to be on the streets
trying to get Nader and Camejo on the ballot," Encimer said.
"The large majority is for Nader/Camejo."

There is no reason for the Greens
to offer a candidate who doesn't threaten the Democratic ticket,
Encimer believes. The Democratic Party will only take progressives
seriously if they hold the power to throw Democrats out of office,
he said. Until they take that fear to heart, the Democratic Party
will never amount to anything but Republicanism with a happy
face.

Camejo (second from right, Cobb (far right) and other Green candidates
debate at the party's national convention.
Photos courtesy www.newsparkproductions.com, New Spark Media
and Arts Collective

"There are some in this
country who are so alienated we don't find Bush a more frightening
alternative than Kerry," he said. "Nader's strength
is that he can hurt the Democrats. We are looking to hurt the
Democratic Party on a fundamental level, because it's a very
harmful organization. There's nothing I can say about the Republican
Party that I can't also say about the Democratic Party, on some
level."

Encimer's outlook echoes that
of Peter Camejo, who in anticipation of the controversy over
Nader's 2004 campaign published a manifesto called the "Avocado
Declaration" earlier this year. The declaration was intended
to toughen the Green Party's nerves for the upcoming election.
It exhorted Greens to be like the avocado -- green on the outside,
green on the inside -- and to not compromise their principles
by not running a candidate for the presidency, or to run one
that did not challenge the Democratic Party.

"The
campaign of the Democrats will be powerful and to some extent
effective But if we do not stand up to this pressure and hold
our banner high, fight them and defend our right to exist, to
have our voices heard, to run candidates that expose the two-party
system and the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party and its complicity
with the Republicans, we will suffer the greatest loss of all,"
Camejo wrote. "The Green Party can and will win the hearts
and minds of people when they see us as reliable and unshakeable,
if we stand our ground."

With the defeat of "avocado-ism"
in Milwaukee, progressive outlets around the country have been
decrying the choice of Cobb and the "safe states" strategy.
One of the most aggressive has been the influential Counterpunch
newsletter, edited by radical journalist Alexander Cockburn [photo at right]
, who lives in Petrolia. Cockburn said last week that with the
Cobb nomination, he had lost all respect for the party.

"Screw `em," he said.
"The Green Party, as far I'm concerned, is a dead letter."

For Cockburn, it's a matter
of the party having the courage of its convictions. If Greens
believe that the two-party system is corrupt -- that it is the
main block to meaningful reform in the country -- why does it
tacitly side with the Democrats in a big election?

"I just think that for
Cobb to say that because Bush is very unpopular and therefore
we can't take the risk, is dumb," he said. "If you're
the Green Party, you're a pipsqueak party, you know you're a
pipsqueak party. But you can either stand on your feet, or you
can squeak. And be a pip."

'Anybody but Bush'

Cobb believes that Kerry is
an "incrementally better" candidate than Bush, and
he seems to say that a Green Party campaign that works to unseat
the incumbent -- rather than simply to win as many votes for
itself as it can -- would be a service to the country. But he
doesn't believe that he is asking his party to fall on its sword
for Kerry. He thinks that not opposing the Democratic ticket
this time around is the best strategy for the long-term future
of the Greens.

The challenge facing the party
this year, Cobb believes, is capturing the large groundswell
of opposition to the Bush presidency in the progressive community.
The Greens can oppose Kerry in word, but to stay credible among
the Fahrenheit 9/11 crowd they can't be seen as undermining
his chances.

"Many progressives are
in this `anybody-but-Bush' mindset," he said. "I believe
that as an organizer, we have to understand where people are.
That terror is real, and we have to acknowledge that it's real
and reach out to them and say, `We hear you. We understand, and
we want to work together with you.' The nuanced strategy that
I'm describing is providing breathing space for progressives.
It's going to give an opportunity for Greens to work with progressive
Democrats at the local level."

Richard Winger is the publisher
of Ballot Access News, a monthly newsletter that tracks
the efforts of small parties and independent candidates to get
on ballots around the country. Winger studies the history of
third parties in America, and he said last week that the situation
facing the Green Party this year is not unprecedented.

"The
Communist Party had this dilemma in 1936," Winger said.
"After four years of the New Deal, the decided that they
liked Roosevelt's presidency. Even though they ran a candidate
of their own, Earl Browder [photo
at left] , he went around the country
telling people to vote for Roosevelt."

Fraser Ottanelli, professor
of history at the University of South Florida and author of The
Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression to
World War II, agreed with this interpretation of that election.
Ottanelli said last week that the key issue for the Communist
Party was to maintain its ties to progressive movements, especially
labor, who supported Roosevelt overwhelmingly over his anti-New
Deal opponent, Republican Alf Landon.

"The important thing, to
Browder, was not to be considered a spoiler," Ottanelli
said. "It paid off in two ways. Clearly, Roosevelt won.
But what it did for the party was that it allowed it to maintain
its credibility and ties to all those [progressive] groups."

A year later, according to Ottanelli,
the Communist Party was at the height of its influence in American
politics.

"They became the left wing
of a broad, ideologically progressive movement in the United
States," he said. "Not because they infiltrated these
groups, because they were accepted. Had they opposed Roosevelt
in `36, none of that would have been possible."

Muddled message?

If
some members of his party are charging that Cobb has become an
unwitting tool of the Democratic Party, there's a more concrete
case to be made that Nader [photo
at right] has become a not-so-unwitting
tool of the Republicans. The San Francisco Chronicle published
a thorough auditing of Nader's finances last week -- it found
that nearly 10 percent of donations over $1,000 to the Nader
campaign came from people who had also given to the Bush-Cheney
re-election committee or other Republican causes. Republican
state parties and conservative grassroots organizations in Oregon,
Arizona and Michigan have led petition drives to get Nader on
the ballot in those states, with the admitted aim of sapping
votes from Kerry. Nader, so far, has waved off calls to return
the money or refuse help from Republican campaigners.

But the deliberate ambiguity
of the Cobb campaign has already resulted in embarrassing moments
for its supporters. Cobb's running-mate, talk-show host Pat LaMarche[photo below left]
, is from Maine -- a state which
leans toward Bush but which the Democrats may hope to contest.
Shortly after the convention, in an interview with the Portland
Press-Herald, LaMarche hinted that she might cast her vote
for the Democratic ticket rather than her own. The comment elicited
a flurry of caustic articles and chat-room comments from the
Nader rump of the party, which forced LaMarche to issue a press
release calling the Press-Herald's article mistaken. "It's
a no-brainer," the statement read. "Of course I'm voting
Green." The paper's reporter, Joshua L. Weinstein, last
week said that he stood by his story, and noted that LaMarche
had never asked the paper for a correction.

That
the party now has to engage in spin-control of this sort could
be interpreted as evidence that it has become politically mature,
for better or worse. The very idea of a radical party running
a "nuanced" campaign is another such sign -- and though
some may scorn it, others find it an attractive proposition.

After discussing the history
of the 1936 election last week, Fraser Ottanelli took some time
to speak as a Floridian rather than an academic. He recalled
driving around African American neighborhoods -- which voted
for Gore overwhelmingly -- on the day of the 2000 presidential
election and being shocked at the turnout. The lines to get into
the polls went around the block, he said. Recalling the scene,
Ottanelli can't contain his residual bitterness over Ralph Nader's
message in that campaign.

"Those people clearly knew
that there was a difference between the two candidates,"
he said. "Those people you can't turn away from."

In choosing Cobb over Nader,
the Green Party indicated that it would not turn away from those
people this time around. Cobb's gamble, which remains to be tested,
is that some day they will turn to the Green Party.